We're the Mesopotamians!
Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal and Gilgamesh...
A legend from ancient Babylon and Akkad, the epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest heroic epic that survives to this day and is very much
Older Than Dirt. Even older than
The Iliad. No relation to the anime
Gilgamesh despite bearing a strong resemblance to modern
shonen. Also, don't confuse it with
GIRUGAMESH or
Gilgamesh, or even
Gilgamesh Wulfenbach.
Gilgamesh is the
super strong, ruggedly handsome,
two-thirds god and one-third mortal king of Uruk, and he is bored. He spends his free time sleeping with each new bride the night of her wedding, which their husbands are not too happy about, but he is the king, and he can do what he wants. The people of Uruk beg the gods to provide Gilgamesh with something better to do. The gods decide that what the restless, powerful,
adventure-hungry hero needs is a best friend and
Worthy Opponent. So they have the womb goddess Aruru make a wild man named Enkidu, who lives out in the wilderness among the animals, annoying farmers and hunters. One of them convinces a temple harlot Shamhat to
make a civilized man out of him, by sleeping with him for a week. After his first taste of sex, Shamhat convinces Enkidu to come back with her to the temple and learn how to live like a civilized human, promising she will introduce him to a best friend so he'll never be lonely again. He accepts.
So Gilgamesh and Enkidu
become inseparable friends (after
beating each other to a pulp in the streets). To celebrate, Gilgamesh decides they should go on an adventure to the Forest of Cedars, defeat the guardian monster Humbaba, and cut down the giant cedar. Why? Why not, when you
only live once. Against the advice of
everybody, they go through with it.
The partners have their next adventure when Gilgamesh turns down the goddess Ishtar's offer to sleep with her,
noting the unsavory fates that befall her lovers, and she retaliates by unleashing the Bull of Heaven on Uruk. The two heroes manage to slay it, which the gods aren't too happy about and decide Enkidu will have to die because of this.
His friend's death only intensifies Gilgamesh's fear of dying and hatred of his own mortality — curse those one-third mortal genes! There's only one thing to do — go to the ends of the Earth and find the secret of eternal life. His advisors tell him that's crazy and that he should get over it. The Scorpion Men who guard the underground tunnel that the sun uses to reach the other side of the Earth every night tell him to turn back and get over it. Siduri, keeper of the inn at the end of the tunnel, tells him to stop causing himself so much stress and
enjoy life while he has the chance and get over his obsession. Utanapishtim, the survivor of the great flood who was made immortal, tells Gilgamesh immortality isn't for humans and he should get over his crazy wish of living forever. Sensing the pattern yet?
To make a long story short, Gilgamesh ultimately fails Utanapishtim's test of staying awake for seven nights (he doesn't even last seven seconds). But Utanapishtim's wife convinces him to be nice and give the seeker
something for his trouble. So he tells Gilgamesh where to find a plant that will grant eternal life and youth. The good news is he finds it. The bad news is a snake eats it when he takes a break on the way home to bathe. Tough luck. Looks like Gilgamesh the
Not So Invincible After All has to come to terms with the fact that
We Are As Mayflies and content himself with the beauty and majesty of his mighty kingdom.
Or he could always go back for more.
Some versions have him decide that the only way to live forever is by becoming a legend and living on in memory.
That, he succeeded at.
This legend provides examples of:
- The Ace
- Bittersweet Ending
- Character Development: The introduction implies that after his adventure, Gilgamesh became a decent king.
- Coming Of Age Story
- Contractual Immortality: The gods put it to a vote about whether Gilgamesh or Enkidu should die. One guess who they choose...
- Dead Sidekick: Gilgamesh completely falls apart after Enkidu's death.
- Death By Sex: Enkidu blames Shamhat for leading him to an early death by seducing him.
- And Ishtar's lovers, as noted below.
- Defeat Means Friendship
- Determinator: Gilgamesh
- Diabolus Ex Machina: Apparently, Happily Ever After is Newer Than They Think.
- Downer Ending: It was the first story of a hero going through every trial, a heroic journey to try to achieve something, and in the end, he failed. What message does that send?
- This is actually a staple of hero epics in itself, enough so that it occupies threads 16-20 of Lord Raglan's 22-part Hero Pattern. The hero typically fails or is abandoned or goes into exile due to the general shittiness of mankind, and then dies on top of a hill (or other high place), signifying that they were in fact too good for this sinful Earth. See Jesus, Moses, Krishna, Romulus, Hercules, the Prince of Wei, etc.. The more divine and greater than human a hero is, the more likely they are to die alone and unloved (until their story is remembered in epic verse). Contrast Achilles and Ulysses, for instance.
- Dream Sequence: Several
- Fate Stay Night: You Should Know This Already. And he is awesome. In the visual novel, anyway.
- Femme Fatale: Ishtar
- Final Fantasy: This series implies that the dimension-hopping four-armed warrior that appears in certain games IS the original epic hero, still seeking immortality and ultimate power.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Nope - Gilgamesh continuously reminds us (and everybody he meets) about Enkidu.
- Genre Savvy: Gilgamesh, when it comes to sleeping with Ishtar.
- Get On With It Already: Most of the long speeches are palatable enough, but there are a handful that get repeated verbatim to several people. On the other hand, this probably shouldn't be too surprising as the work was originally "written" on clay tablets with pictographs impressed into them while still wet. Likely the "template" for these speeches was reused. Ur Example of Copy Paste?
- Actually, a more likely reason is that despite having been written down and codified, the epic was derived from oral sources and for most people continued to be oral storytelling. Back then most people were illiterate, after all. Repetitions, rhyme and such are essentially mnemonic devices to help people repeat the story verbatim from memory. Repetition is also a common stylistic element of oral storytelling, used for pacing, emphasis and symmetry. Think of song refrains, fairy tales and the like.
- God Emperor: Gilgamesh again (well, they did name it after him). It also points out how the Sumerian kings are specifically not this.
- Half Human Hybrids: Well, "one third human" hybrid, however that's possible...
- Hooker With A Heart Of Gold: Shamhat
- Ho Yay: Honestly, do things ever change?
- This is another one of those "life was really different 4,000 years ago" things, but sexual orientation as we know it didn't really exist back then. It's pretty strongly hinted in some translations that Gilgamesh and Enkidu WERE in fact lovers. Sandar's translation gives a line from the Coming of Enkidu as; "When you see him you will be glad; you will love him as a woman and he will never forsake you."
- Jumped At The Call: Why did Gilgamesh drag Enkidu on a mission to defeat Humbaba and cut down the giant cedar? Because it was there!
- It's entirely possible that the reason is in one of the missing sections.
- If You Ever Do Anything To Hurt Her: Ishtar runs crying to her father after Gilgamesh spurns her, so he gives her the Bull of Heaven to terrorize Uruk in revenge.
- I Love You Because I Cant Control You
- Kill Him Already
- Know When To Fold Em: Gilgamesh doesn't.
- Making A Splash: Gilgamesh goes to find the survivors of the flood, who were granted immortality.
- A Man Is Not A Virgin
- Memetic Mutation: A Japanese metal band named themselves after this story, which then resulted in one of their fans being immortalized on the internet
◊.
- More Expendable Than You
- Narrative Poem: The Ur Example
- The Nothing After Death
- Overprotective Dad
- Oldest Ones In The Book: This story is Chapter One.
- Outrun The Fireball: Gilgamesh outruns the sun.
- Rule Of Cool: Two-thirds god...
- Sex As Rite-Of-Passage: Shamhat and Enkidu
- So You Want To Live Forever
- Super Strength
- Threshold Guardians: The Scorpion Men
- Walking The Earth: Gilgamesh after Enkidu's death
- Wangst: Same as above... and is cranked up when he realizes he lost the immortality plant.
- We Are As Mayflies
- What An Idiot: If you have a plant that will make you immortal, don't wait until after you've taken a bath to use it.
- He was actually going to give it to an old man to see if it would turn him young again, so he was probably playing it safe since he didn't know if it would actually kill him instead.
- Wild Hair
- Woman Scorned: Ishtar
- Worthy Opponent: Enkidu and Gilgamesh.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Ishtar threatens to knock down the doors of the underworld to bring the dead up, who will eat the living. Yeah.
